SC elected office pay raises are usually bad ideas. Here’s why these raises are beyond bad
The fact that South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson will make $208,000 a year but can persuade juries to send someone living in poverty to prison for decades for selling or even just possessing weed is vile. It’s absolutely vile.
That Education Superintendent-elect Ellen Weaver, who completed a questionable master’s degree program, will make $214,000 when some South Carolina teachers make about a quarter of that is also vile. Just purely disgusting.
Not only are the raises puke-worthy, they’re an embodiment of wealth inequality and the aloof mentality of state officials.
As reported by The State’s Joseph Bustos, the attorney general and education superintendent will be paid more than double their positions’ current salaries next year after a state commission, made up of eight lawmakers and three governor appointees, agreed to increase the officials’ salaries. Four other statewide elected positions received raises, but remained below $200,000.
The jobs of superintendent and and attorney general are complex and of utmost importance. The salaries needed an increase from the amounts set in 1994, as did other statewide officer salaries. But an increase of more that 100%? That’s criminal. Wilson should prosecute the officials who gave him that absurd raise and then prosecute himself if he takes it for misconduct in office.
The median household income in South Carolina in 1994 was about $31,000, according to the U.S. Census. In 2020, South Carolinians’ median income was about $56,000. That’s about an 81% increase in 26 years that doesn’t count the chunk inflation has taken out of average South Carolinian’s salaries.
It is no way justifiable to raise the salaries of the attorney general and superintendent by almost 130% from the 1994 levels.
With these raises, a group of lawmakers and the governor’s handpicked cronies just disrespected all average South Carolinians. They just told you that the attorney general works harder and deserves a much bigger increase than you. The untested, never-served before superintendent-elect deserves a lot more than you.
At very least, the commission could have implemented these raises in a non-election year. Now Weaver, who apparently was perfectly content to make $92,000 a year because that was the salary when she filed to campaign for the job, gets a raise without even putting her lunch in the education department’s fridge. It’s shocking that pitchforks and torches haven’t come out for just that fact.
There’s this idea that somehow raising salaries for these positions will make them “more competitive” and that the raises are for “attracting candidates that are good for South Carolina,” as State Rep. Gary Simrill, R-York, the outgoing Ways and Means Committee chairman, said.
The Republican Party just finished making elections less competitive in South Carolina by gerrymandering the maps, and they confessed to wanting to make it easier for Republicans to win in court. If South Carolina lacks quality candidates, one fundamental reason is a candidate’s political connections matter more than good ideas, particularly for statewide offices.
The raises are a done deal, and so there’s no un-wasting that taxpayer money. But this would have been a much better solution: Raise statewide office positions to $100,000.
That seems fair. Every election they win, the attorney general and superintendent get $5,000 and the other offices get $2,500 raises . While it might be tainted in a one-party dominated state, reelection is kind of a “job-well done” by voters semi-equivalent to a person getting a merit raise from their job. Their raises are capped at three times the median income of the state.
Simrill made at least one good point. South Carolina needs better candidates. It needs them far more than it needed these raises.
This story was originally published November 11, 2022 at 1:46 PM with the headline "SC elected office pay raises are usually bad ideas. Here’s why these raises are beyond bad."